The difference in denim sales predicted and reported reveals, while designers try to make fashion, successful strategies mirror consumers’ cravings.

What started as workers’ wear, found home in Hollywood flicks, went fast in designer logos and then later failed facing more fashionable competition has come back as cool. According to retail buyers, jeans are high-desire. Runway-driven forecasts directed brands from Gucci to Gap to deepen their denim-goods assortments. Levi’s new style surge left the brand showing shoppers “how to wear” what was once a classic category. Still, denim sale’s actualities missed many merchants’ buying assumptions. In mid-September Levi’s announced a 5% denim sales decline, the category slipping to their smallest-growing spot.

photo credit: Levis

Still, whether Womenswear Daily or some woman’s blog, a pair of blue backs every styling suggestion. According to Elle’s “55 of Fall’s Best Jeans”, it takes no less than ten styles to survive winter, with an edit spanning from “mom” to moto fits. But when healthy brands like Old Navy said September’s unit sales were a disappointment, business analysts concluded consumers were less deni-primed than merchants determined. Though from the positive, customer-side denim discussions, the issue seems not if shoppers think jeans are in fashion. Rather, the numbers-gap is merchants’ failing to understand ways society’s swing influences why and how shoppers buy denim.

IN DISTRESS.

Photo Credit: Gap

Jeans were the count-on category for customer conversion. If the runway-determined “it” item couldn’t sell mass-market, a brand survived with their blues. Prior fast fashion’s runway access, across-the-board purchases took higher investment. Consumers counted on product observability to activate their spend. And so mid-priced to premium jeans, the masses with identical back-pocket motifs validating their purchase, were a no-guilt buy. As a daily staple, they had low cost-per-wear and strong season-to-season sustainability.

Fast fashion changed the category’s fate. Suddenly, owning runway was a reality. Where the gap between catwalk and can-buy clothes used to make room for the blues to bank-in, when customers could break their diffusion-line constraints, the lesser-creative jeans didn’t land on their shopping lists. As the ease-to-own fads caused closet clutter, and the blog-o-sphere’s mounting fashionistas pushed clothing to more complication, wearers mitigated choice overload by choosing fast-fashion outfits like costumes—for the occasion.

Activities are now a black-or-white dress casual, or creatively fashionable. For the typical leisure lacking unspoken dress constructs, athletic wear finds a fit. It’s ease offsets fast fashion’s intricacies, mall stores mounting with peacock pieces while shoppers prowl them in spandex. In this separation, buyers don’t need grey-area classics like jeans. Around 2012, clothing retailers started to feel the effects. While Gap faced sales failure, the company called 2013 a “breakout year” for their athletic brand Athleta. Similarly, Old Navy, with a fashion-focused buy plan at too-low-to-pass prices, sustains success in selling for those must-be-fashionable moments.

THE HIGH RISE

But with denim’s interest drop, designers identified an opportunity. In the short-attention shopping atmosphere fast-fashion makes and mirrors, consumption trends also rotate rapidly. Customers will snap-back to the simple. The falling of ultra-cheap, imitate everything fast-fashion (Forever 21) to more edited, pricier vertical retailers (Zara) shows the first signs of spanning assortment distress. Blue jeans seem the answer to battle consumers’ excess consumption, an item that thrived as uniform.

photo credit: Abercrombie

Perhaps, given time for this consumer pendulum to swing to classic, denim adopted could alleviate retailer woes. But unable to wait out the turnaround, designers tried to drive jean-adoption by observability, just as how jeans rose-to-fame prior. Since 2014 was the dead-denim year, designers over-pushed the fabric to prove it a fashion. In some cases denim was their show’s core, pieces layered and paired together. Brands differentiated from the out-of-fashion designs by making denim new. Former faux-pauxs like high waists, overalls, and denim skirts are now acceptable to wear. When it wasn’t the focal, designers constructed seventies-derived shows; as fashion trickles down, denim survives the process. Runway commentary validated the effort. Specialty retailers expected their recent-past’s sunnier days ahead. Abercrombie and Fitch hedged their precious turnaround shot on modernized classics like denim.

Fashion’s objective criticism loss inflates the public’s denim acceptance. Magazines are desperate for designers’ ad-spend dollars and bloggers create content to activate affiliate link click-through. They say what the designers put down the runway is consumer motivated to stop from destroying their paycheck chances.

SLIM RESULTS

Though in denim-clogging catwalks, designers stripped the function that could make jeans mitigate their misery. Cheap fashion is closer in appearance than specialty store or diffusion line product, if not quality, to runway walked and blogger talked. Catwalk clothing never lasts long; why would buyers spend more than a buck on them? Customers are primed to seek runway product at cheap prices.

Take athletic wear. Shoppers pick up yoga pants, not a runway staple, for near to $100 dollars. They don’t perceive them as “trendy” fashion. Their life-span justifies a higher spend. In contrast, track pants sell better at lower costs. Though also athletic, their runway relevancy makes them temporary. They won’t live in fashion’s future, so customers won’t seek a pair with a long-wear.

photo credit: levis

Designers employed denim style-diversity to make jeans “new.” Shoppers were not ready for the type they had worn-before. But this stole denim’s simplicity just as customers were showing signs of the trend back to classic. Both choice and consumption overload come with cheap fashion. Customers will default to denim when they grow weary of wondering to buy suede skirts or leather piped-leggings, to find all new tops to match them or pray they have compliments in their closets, and to keep them or carry them to Goodwill when they go “out” in two weeks? Yet in this jean-crazed current state, denim creates the same questions: to buy skinnies, flares, or boyfriend fits for fall?

No surprise, the retailers finding denim sales success figured they needed low prices. They also developed a more customer-functional product to make purchase decisions simple for the customers seeking to slim-down their clothing assortments. Target, a retailer built on delivering inexpensive, on-trend items in ways divergent from fast fashion (as in innovating the designer partnership), reported the denim category led their August apparel sales leap. It took smart advertising and merchandising, like communication of re-designed product and the display of denim, in all its diversity, along with their more-fashionable items.

Retailers can’t stack denim on a back-wall shelf, call it a classic, and make margins like the early 2000s. To see success, they must communicate denim is not a grey-area item. It is a fashion. Though in doing so, they must remember to make prices moderate. As fashion is no-longer constricted to a specific brand-name, shoppers can purchase denim anywhere. Brands need unique and innovative product development to make customers buy denim from them versus the competition.

Ashley Mattei.

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It’s smart to shake-up-the strategy. If exclusivity is the USP, it can’t be oversaturated. However, in stretches between super-sized collaborations, such as: Liberty of London, Missoni, and Lilly for Target, the store can’t maintain it’s momentum. Cases like Neiman Marcus and Peter Pilotto put customers to question “has Target lost their steam?” Core categories’ sales stale when “style” isn’t attached to Target.

Still, Target should consider their habit to fall, then fly to the top by designer is finite. Though resources will run-dry before the customers’ desires to buy. More than savvy communications strategies made the winning partnerships. Pop-up-shops, punchy commercials, and influencer sneak-peaks are important to raising awareness, even more-so when they were fresh pre-Missoni. But, considering lines like Altuzarra had everything from blogger backing to morning show buzz and still couldn’t break scarcity ceiling, it’s clear product and planning produce purchase more than promotion. Specific qualities make the “great” collaborations must-shops. And unfortunately for Target, they’re details designers are ditching to keep desirable in the fast-paced fashion cycle.

Liberty of London, Missoni, Lilly Pulitzer: all brands have a trademark style that shifts minimally between seasons. Compare this to current runways; one season Karl Lagerfeld is in a Parisian Café and the next a K-pop paradise. Fashion designers are diversifying. In contrast, Target’s powerhouse collaborations carry a “set” look, conveyed largely by print: romantic floras, zig-zags, and palm scenes respectively. They are identifiably designer without a logo, as pre-2000s logo-mania associated name-bearing buys with affordable luxury. If you can’t purchase the product, you buy the name. In being noticeably “designer” by print versus logo, the Target products show shoppers they deserve design, but still carry the advantage of being a recognizable designer. Print also shifts focus from quality production. The three lines were “designed” by their artful colors and prints, though silhouettes were relatively simple. Altuzarra pieces, on the other hand, tried to carry the brand’s sharp construction and disappointed. Missoni’s knits were easy to replicate, but there is no way to design a perfectly darted trench-coat for a discount department-store.

Print makes “world”s of Target’s un-inspiring apparel department atmospherics. Wall colors my be bland and fluorescents blinding, but bundle complimenting and colorful items together and a life is added to the style. Print puts the same flare on Target’s no-frills website; product photos add a customer-craved cuteness target commercials promise but shopping channels never fully convey.

Target caters to a certain shopper: the image-aware mom who “expect[s] more” but want’s to “pay less” for it. She is creative, calculated, and conscious about her buys. But, all in her Target cart feels pre-approved. Target fits into her “expect more” lifestyle because it is a trade-up from the K-marts and Walmarts. But because it meets-needs, Target’s customer always looks to trade-up to more. When the designer collaborations create “worlds” that are dreamy extensions of customers’ current lifestyles, like a suburban pool paradise or city of stroller-toting spies, they win. These worlds make advertising matter. Lily Pulitzer’s celebrity-packed spot was not desirable for it’s star power. The celebrities were simply artifacts of her carefree world, like the giganticized teapots taking Liberty of London’s promotion to royal excess. Pulitzer’s party represents a luxurious leisure that’s the fantasy to the burger and beach parties Lilly buyers actually don their duds for. Similarly, Moms in Missoni might not be passing notes on spy missions, but will trade gossip tips from behind their strollers. It’s this half-relatable, half-unreal mix making customers buy. The concept caters to Target shoppers’ appreciation of life, but aptness to strive for more. Peter Pilotto had a signature style but couldn’t garner frenzy because promotions fell-short of putting a world to his print.

Of course, these “worlds” are much easier realized when merchandise isn’t limited to apparel. When shoppers can see a hammock in the same style as a dress, they see not fashion trends but on-trend existences. Shoppers don’t stop at Target to fill their closets, they go to craft their lives. And so for frenzy-above-the-usual, the collaborations’ “world”s can’t stand seamless with Target merchandise. If Target is more-seeking shoppers’ realities, the “worlds” work when they have a touch of inaccessibility. Occasions for a boldly zig-zagged sweater dresses are few, but that’s where the appeal is found.

And perhaps the best plan to communicate wanted-but-rare products, is the appearance of no planning at all. Website crashes and shutdowns, while frustrating, give Target shoppers the experience needed to make the products “special.” Millennials, trade turkey dinners for Black-Friday lines; they associate chaotic shopping with deals on quality items. The quality construct strengthens when, shut out, they cruise eBay for the exclusive items, to find their forty-dollar cardigan’s worth doubled fifty percent.

Target is simultaneously in a hard and happy spot; needing designers while needing to take the strategy slowly. The store carries trendy table-settings, furniture, and foods with cohesive colors to their apparel. They could set up their own “world” (call it a lifeSTYLE spot) within their stores-a little real and a little unrealized–and likely see stronger core-category sales. But because target is so in-tune with their shoppers, whether they can forever own the fantasy they continually seek is unsure.

On May 13, online department store Net-A-Porter will launch The Net Set, a fashion-focused social media site, made exclusively for mobile. Envisioned by-Vice President Sarah Watson and Creative Director Alexandra Hoffnung, “the social network for shopping,” opens invitation-only on the iTunes store, with Android device and general public release dates soon-to-follow. Accessed via smart phones, watches, or tablets (with limited functionality), Net Setters fill their personal profiles with fashion finds from the company’s curated, live-product feed. They can follow globe-wide trends, fashion influencers, friends, and their favorite style tribes such as “Rock-Chic” or “Double Denim.”

Aside from the digital department store’s luxury merchandise, the style-minded may pack their profiles with fashion inspiring imagery, which “admires” prowl in a Pinterest-like manner. For the ladies with no care to share their stylish secrets, the Net Set application serves strictly a shopping function. It matches fashions in Net-A-Porter’s stock with any photo uploaded, then lets searchers go from browsing to buying in a seamless step. Same day delivery will be available in Manhattan, London, and Hong Kong, with an overnight option for those instant-gratification seekers elsewhere.

Photo: Net-A-Porter

Though no matter the features, time spent on a social site correlates with it’s community’s creativity. The Net Set’s content won’t be slow-to-start. Net-A-Porter’s team curated a 15 member “style council” of fashion well-knowns to infuse feeds with ideas. W magazine contributor Giovanna Battaglia is one of the members, who is compensated via an affiliate model for participation. Brands will also have dedicated pages where they can converse and share with customers to their chosen degree.

There’s no denying the Net-Set boasts an attractive edit of shopping tools. Plus, with Condé Nast staff on their Style Council, positive media’s at the Net Set’s every need. Still, to say the site will be an investment return or resource-eater rests on it’s balance of social, search, and shop use. Applications like Pose and Snapette prove clothing conversation hasn’t always served as the best social-media model . It puts the “tap for credits” cluttering Instagram to question: Are they consumers calling for a seamless social-to-shopping format or simply posters striving for profits? And, if a social shopping is in the customers’ wants, does their desire wane when it’s a site’s devotion?

Successful social networks are narcissistic-in-nature, but few fashion-focused have found ways to showcase the stylist the products-styled equally. On Instagram, photos are typically the profile holder’s property, so likes are a personal praise. Admirers aweing over products on a profile won’t induce the same sharer-satisfaction; credit is split between the creating brand and the product curator, and since no divine skill is needed to slap clothing from a professionally merchandised edit on a profile, the most falls to the former. This is why Head-of-Brand David Rubin claimed Pinterest was”not a social networking site” during 2014s SXSW conference. Their user gratification comes internally, from “discovering and being inspired,” by putting content in a “personal order.”

Fashion sites like Polyvore have capitalized off of this same model, the benefit’s in personally creating a clothing board. But buying comes after peer-approval, so activating purchases on “for-self” sites isn’t simple. Perhaps Polyvore’s savior is users sharing boards on off-site blogs or social networks. Away from competing imagery, they become the creator’s (or discoverer’s) own. Unlike the Net Set, Polyvore’s mobile app, Remix, functions only to search, then share externally. It takes users through the first steps of the purchase process, so the ultimate gratification comes from ownership, different from their desktop site where creation gratification can detract from clothes-shopping. The Net Set’s mobile-exclusivity will cut customers thinking it is a creation tool. Though even if it is thought of to search, share, and shop, without imagery of the sharer actually owning the outfit, is it a real recommendation? What’s lost in online shopping is the fit and feel, and a recommender-without-owning can speak only to appearance prior to purchase. This is why Amazon’s verified reviews are the sought-out.

Photo Polyvore

Polyvore thrives off of the external share model because they sell advertising; the more free dissemination on different channels, the more highly-sought they become. By contrast, Net-A-Porter holds inventory; they need purchasers. Profit is shopper loyalty. The Net Set must cannibalize the easy-search aggregate sites and social media’s peer advantage by combining them in a format so functional there is no need to fill them off-site. Fashion’s a field of imitations; on a detail-filtering site like Shopstyle, Net-A-Porter will always face side-by-side competition. The department store’s announced merger with Italian competitor Yoox proves their cautious of their shopping model’s saliency. Of course, it is this model making Net-A-Porter one of the select stores that could pull off this social shop for profit. It’s department nature means users won’t feel brand-limited (and therefore advertised to), and because it is online only, there is a wider body of brands it can hold.

When Net-A-Porter launched in 2000, Messet couldn’t convince brands her online store could produce profit. Shoppers browsing habits adapt prior to their buying preferences, and though they were searching online, they were still spending in-store. Ironically, Net-A-Porter became an integral force in the online buying adaption. Its magazine-style look afforded shoppers a need-solution physical stores left unfulfilled: more product information and ideas. Messet used editorial to explain an outfit’s purpose, which not only drew eyes but increased buying motivation. Because luxury brands were more-weary to establish ecommerce stores, Net-A-Porter was the perfect spot to purchase when in-person access was not available. Secondly, she understood in-person luxury shopping was not easy, though customers definitely sought it to be. When reaching an ideal self-image is the reason to buy, why bother with a strangling store staff’s recommendations? Some customers like service and others seek to self-serve; the latter group needed a place to purchase luxury.

Photo: Net-A-Porter

So like Net-A-Porter exploited features unique to desktop buying, the Net Set benefits by knowing mobile browsers seek to alleviate . A user can check the site times two minutes apart and discover something new. Like the fast-pace of a Twitter solved the issue of finding the same statuses on a Facebook news feed, the Net Set assures shoppers won’t be seeing the same set of “new arrivals,” no matter when they log-on. This quick pace increases the activation to buy ; high-sought items are style wins with quick sell-outs. Getting shoppers to spend significant dollars on screens won’t be simple, but the pressure to be up-to-date has proved successful with Net-A-Porter’s set since their start.

It’s customer-knowledge also quieting concerns shoppers will shun advertising posing as a social site. Net-A-Porter’s store and print publication content has always pushed it’s partner’ products. The 2.5 million monthly visitors understand their fashion news is motivated by sales no matter the format, perhaps appreciating Net-A-Porter’s transparency in putting native ads on their own property. Though if the site chooses not to pay commissions to the general public, motivation to create on the network will be low. Net-A-Porter runs a highly-regarded affiliate program, so their users are primed to want cash for their content.

No doubt if Net-A-Porter can generate enough exclusive use, the Net set will be a brand-attracting tool. But whether it is the “Social Site for Fashion”, well, that’s up to the shopper.

Celebrities clad in designers’ creations will crowd Monday’s Met Gala red carpet to celebrate the Costume Institute’s annual fashion exhibit. China: Through the Looking Glass, examines the “impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion” and showcases “how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries.” The exhibition runs from May 7th to August 16th and sets Western fashion to the backdrop of Chinese art, showcasing the concepts carried-over.

Women’s Wear Daily delivered it’s first weekly publication on Wednesday. The 300 page, part magazine, part paper, replaces print trade-journals subscribers received every weekday morning. Following Condé Nast selling “the Bible of Fashion” to Penske Media Corporation in 2014, the publication has attempted to make their archaic metaphor less actualized. In the era of first-person fashion blogs, free online bits, and a 24-7 news feeds, Women’s Wear Daily decided on a digital strategy to shed their stone-age staunch.

Feel the weight of what you’re wearing? It puts print’s dimensionality to shame, sends more sensory communication than color; texture is taking over as fashion’s favorite detail. Forecasters can trace Fendi’s cozy-furs and Chanel’s frayed tweeds to last winter’s chill. But as fringe falls into the spring and summery plumes make pattern and pallet second-thoughts to touchable constructs, trend analyzers attribute texture’s reason to more than a Polar Vortex response. While fashion follows customer desires, and favoring high-feel apparel is appropriate for the physically intangible time we inhabit–all creative products trapped behind our smart-phone screens– it’s no coincidence luxury companies are facilitating the fashion with fury. Carrying construction complexity, touches that can’t be copied through savvy patterning because they come straight from the textile, these textured times could steal some of fast-fashion’s force.

Oscar de La Renta, considered “the last of the generation of bold tastemakers,” lost an eight-year battle with cancer at the age of 82. The man known for feminine elegance and Parisian extravagance, differentiated by a touch of Latin charisma, died Monday evening in his Kent, Connecticut home. Despite mid-priced luxury’s cannibalization of soft luxury sales, de la Renta’s privately-held brand grew fifty percent in the last eight years. During that time his fashions, favored by dated but revenue-driving ladies-who-lunch, simultaneously landed on “current” celebrities including Amal Clooney, Amy Adams, and Sarah Jessica Parker. De la Renta’s focus on occasion-dressing distinguished his brand from his inaccessible-couture competitors, yet built a formality above the ready-to-wear runways. His dresses showed up at State Dinners and on red carpets alike, for wearers who valued balancing status with being relatable. Their publicity built the “iconic” American association for his designs, which later drove demand in label-loving, East-markets.

Two girls gripping their blanket-capes slow at a store’s threshold. “I swear Gap told us to ‘Be Bright’ two springs ago,” the short one directs her companion to the “dress normal” advertisement decking the display window.
“I swear you couldn’t get out of a cobalt moto six months ago” Her friend qualifies; what irony we expect stores to keep a style when we can’t keep a sweater for more than a season.
And there is credit to both points. Gap’s declaration to “be the same” seems a sad turn from it’s “all inclusive” Make Love campaign. However, the shift is not a brand-identity switch but a sustaining tactic. A brand’s value is only vogue as it’s compatibility to their target. Telling an audience who cares about “changing the world” to dress normal seems counter-intuitive, but not when one considers how fast-fashion changed the connotation of “dressing different.” For Gap, going “normal” may just mean going where the customer’s needs are grounded.